Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

[Qikz]

Just like that, they've got to find an extra grand a month, for which they get nothing. And they can't sell, because who would willingly take on such a charge?

Even if some buyer was willing to buy it, they'd have to be a cash buyer too. No mortgage lender will accept such an onerous service charge as suitable security.

And she's in shared ownership too, the worst parts of renting and ownership combined into a facade of "affordable housing". Charged full whack for service charge without having 100% ownership.

I really hope Labour's planning reforms extend into massive reform of the Leasehold system, if even a shared ownership housing association (not for profit) is increasing costs so dramatically, it's not fit for purpose and totally unsustainable.

I'm in shared ownership and even with the currently obscene service charge I still pay less for both my mortgage and my current rent than I used to pay for a really shitty studio in just rent and even that price has gone up since then.

[Peter Crisp]

I just changed my ISA to a fixed rate for 2 years of 4.2% which is a shitload better than the 0.25% it has been at for about the last decade due to the super low rates.

I now have a small passive income for my retirement fund for when I become a cyborg in the future.
I can then go on a spending spree and maybe buy an ice cream .

[Moggy]

This is absurd. Zero justification for it. These bastards are clearly now just grabbing as much as they can while it's still legal, because they know their collective greed is going to result in the law being changed.

When Aisling opened this year's annual service charge bill for the one-bedroom flat she owns with her partner, she immediately assumed it "must be a mistake".
They bought the flat in Kings Cross, north London, last year through a shared ownership scheme run by Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association (ISHA).
From Monday, her 2024 bill will rise by 274% from £4,200 to almost £16,000 for communal maintenance and services, on top of mortgage and rent.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c884m42lvk8o

Just like that, they've got to find an extra grand a month, for which they get nothing. And they can't sell, because who would willingly take on such a charge?

Even if it's otherwise legal, it's a clear case of exploitation.

Why not just make it £1trillion a month?

[rinks]

They'll keep pushing until they reach the breaking point. Poor sods can probably, somehow, just about manage an extra £1,000 a month, so they'll squeeze them that hard. It's the feudalism I was talking about the other day. Abhorrent.

[Green Gecko]

Edit: Eh TMI

[KK]

Got a phenomenal £17 off at Deliveroo on groceries (split between £10 and £7 off, used in conjunction). Used it at Sainsbury’s Local. In reality the genuine savings once you factor out price rises, service charge etc. was more like £9 but still, a nice saving. Makes you wonder what their profit margins are when they can do promotions like this.

Not allowed to order any alcohol with it though.

[Green Gecko]

Silicone valley / apps type stuff is very hot on loss leading / customer acquisition. Venture capitalists pour tax deductible investments into businesses that inherently run off low/no wage work - they basically exist on venture capital and it's surprising how often they indeed never actually make a net profit.

As of 2022, Deliveroo had never posted an annual net profit. Its losses were only slightly decreased to 2022 to £245 million.

They lost two hundred and forty five million pounds in 2022.

They literally can't afford it, but they bet that they will (eventually). Sometimes they eventually just run out of money and the legitimate taxpayer eats it by bailing out the banks making the loans, and the billionaires via tax breaks. Need more money? The business just goes begging back to VCs for more money which of course is virtually unlimited.

I make an annual loss for tax purposes, and that's somehow abhorrent. I should do something else! You see it's unthinkable for a small business to invest their own money in something but hardly anyone knows gooseberry fool they use every day is losing billions of dollars all the time.

Billionaires can also buy loss leading businesses to claim tax relief on their other profits.

So if they invest 100 million in a loss leading tech business, which then folds, they can buy it back for almost nothing (it may be in the terms of their loan that the business becomes their property if it fails - and they often know it will fail) and claim both that cost and their loss as a business expense against their other profits in other businesses. Thus, it costs them nothing in real terms to invest in something, because they can just avoid paying tax on something they'd otherwise owe if they didn't spend it.

Some unicorn type businesses exist solely as a tax avoidance vehicle;- silicone valley VC places bets on the success of an idea; they're essentially gambling with what "spare" money they have, and the worst thing that can happen if VCs are rich enough is that they get tax breaks. It will never touch them. Best case scenario, they make obscene profits. Which can then be spent on more gambling investments etc etc. Of course little to none of this reaches the people "in" the businesses; they get paid as little as possible, and if they do earn a "living wage", they get taxed on that like a normal person. They end up paying for the system that's too big to fail. If it were actually allowed to fail, there would be no billionaires.

Ideas like Deliveroo etc would probably be funded nationally or locally with the profits split between everyday people as shareholders. If people felt the idea wasn't going to work, they wouldn't invest. Whereas a VC can afford to invest in a business even if they don't think it's going to work, or it literally doesn't work.

It's the same money distributed differently. There's maybe an argument to be made that VCs are less risk averse than other forms of finance, but they also give zero gooseberry fools whatsoever about local interests or those of everyday people. Of course, banks can literally print money so they can invest in whatever they want; if those investments fail, the taxpayer pays for it.

So why don't we just pay for the things that we actually want? Well... We're essentially not allowed to.

[Moggy]

Tesco has said price pressures on grocers have eased as it reported bumper sales and profits for the past year.

The UK's biggest supermarket chain said pre-tax profits hit £2.3bn, up from £882m, while sales rose by 4.4% to £68.2bn in the year to 24 February.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68776913

Great news everyone, Tesco has made enormous profits for the shareholders.

Shareholders.

[poshrule_uk]

Tesco has said price pressures on grocers have eased as it reported bumper sales and profits for the past year.

The UK's biggest supermarket chain said pre-tax profits hit £2.3bn, up from £882m, while sales rose by 4.4% to £68.2bn in the year to 24 February.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68776913

Great news everyone, Tesco has made enormous profits for the shareholders.

Shareholders.

Those plucky underdogs come out on top again

[Victor Mildew]

So happy to be paying more so the shareholders get a nice little payout

[Tomous]

Three cheers for shareholders!

[jawa_]

Great to see that Tesco is being rewarded for keeping food prices low these past few years. I'm more than happy to continue paying over the odds to enable bumper payouts to those hardworking CEOs at Tesco and the food manufacturers .

[ITSMILNER]

I say we all stand outside our homes at 8pm and clap for the shareholders

[Squinty]

Price gouging strawberry floaters

[Photek]

As of 2022, Deliveroo had never posted an annual net profit. Its losses were only slightly decreased to 2022 to £245 million.

They lost two hundred and forty five million pounds in 2022.

They literally can't afford it, but they bet that they will (eventually).

Their bet paid off then.

[Green Gecko]

I'm not sure you read the implied sentence. I'm not sure what your point is.

They (or their investors) have bet that they will eventually make a profit, but they haven't yet gotten anywhere close to a profit overall.

Only last month, after 11 years of operating at massive annual losses, did they make their first EBITDA profit of £85 million "earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization" (which is one way of stating a profit, it could very well still be a net loss following all other cost deductions). Depending on how much net profit they make each year for the next ten years (a gross profit isn't really a profit - that's your margin, it's turnover - what you charge - minus your direct costs - your cost per sale, it does not factor in operating costs i.e. overheads, that includes salaries), they may never pay off the 10+ years of gigantic losses. The thing is these aren't loans, they're just infinite monies pumped in by VCs to deduct from their other taxable profits.

It's very much common that companies like that never actually make any money in the truest sense. Yes they employ people (except they don't, because they're zero hours contractors), but they are only viable as "a going concern" because investors take advantage of massive losses in the way I previously described.

Yet we can look at someone making a small loss like a few thousand pounds a year and call them a failure, with the banks unwilling to fund their venture.

If you thought you were being grammatically clever or something inferring A/B logic from my sentence, I'm sorry - it's still absurd how much money these companies lose.

[jawa_]

Cancelled my Netflix £10.99 monthly sub. Re-started a Disney+ £7.99 monthly sub.

Dat three quid saving .